All I ever Wanted
by BlutengelHates
Summary: How Aziraphale, Principality of the eastern Gate; and Crowley, snake demon, immortal enemies, could not accept their mutual love through time.
1. Murder

All I ever wanted was to see you smiling. All I ever wanted was you and me.

First thing ever certainly was to come back to the start of it all.  
It had started with rain. Not only rain, there were merely drops anyway. Until then, the weather had been clear, the sky was of a deep blue and the sun shining to the point one would blind themselves by gazing at it. That was quite boring, considering it.  
Crawl-y hated the weather. Well, his snake condition pushed him to stay out of any shadow from the Garden, his blood cold. Still, he hated it. That was more annoying than Hell on some points – wait, thinking back, it was as annoying as Hell. Still the same, linear, and unmoving thing.  
He had trouble understanding that, as he had a glimpse of his former life, when he was part of the angels creating the universe. They were not mere stars; galaxies, planets, meteors, stardust… He missed it so much. He gazed at the sky, which had turned out cloudy, stormy, and threatening. No stars then. He sighed, a deep and full of emotions type of sigh he did not know he was holding for so long, as he felt a tad better.  
Then, the rain started to pour every single being down here; until he felt no more. He frowned and looked around to find that some sort of miracle – rain is wet by definition.  
A white wing was protecting him from the first storm of mankind.

Aziraphale had not moved from their little chat, contemplating the outer side of the Garden, from where they both were standing. He was watching the deep horizon, as if not conscious of his action. As if it had been pure instinct.

Crawl-y felt a urge to let him away, to chase him, to snarl at his so perfect face; as to counteract the fact he only was devoured by misery and self-hatred for who he had turned to be.  
Since the Fall, he had continuously resented the damn world, God Herself, the angels, Satan, everyone he could remember of. Since the Fall, he felt ugly, dirty, unworthy of anything.

Not that he would never be ashamed to tempt Eve with the Fruit of Knowledge – because, if all aspects considered, why Humans could not be aware of anything, like placid God's creatures? Why would they not question their condition and environment? Oh, yes, asking questions is dangerous, he thought bitterly.

So he could not understand the Principality Aziraphale who was kind and mindless about him. Okay, he was a damn angel: angels are naturally kind; still, he was the only one neither fearing him nor hating him straightforwardly. If Crawl-y went to cross the path of other angels, they quickly acted belligerent to him – and Crawl-y made everything he could not to meet any of them. He despised them too.

Aziraphale waited the rain to stop. He had remained silent the whole time, and Crawl-y finally managed to control his impulse to reject that presence as he soon sensed some peace within himself being alongside that angel.  
Since when had he not felt that way?

Next to the storm went the night. His eyes were searching what he craved to contemplate every night: the stars were shining, as beautiful as ever. Since the cosmos. His gaze fell up to Alpha Centauri like he were an automaton.

They parted their respective ways and acted as if nothing of the sort had been existed. Crawl-y went back to his serpent form and slithered to a hidden place to "lick" his hurt feelings.

There was something Crawl-y hated amongst anything else (this list would be revised through time): the blind murder of children.  
From his hidden way of life, he had observed Adam and Eve's descendents grow up, and he had become fond of children. He sometimes risked his position mixing up with them in his human form, only to play with them. He loved embodying the bad guy role and jokingly frightening them, running after them, whilst they were running for a fake safety place and laughing and giggling.  
The very first murder he had heard of (fortunately to him, he neither witnessed it nor tempted anyone involved) was of Abel's. He and Cain were grown-up; yet, to Crawl-y's perspective they were like children to him.

Still the worse was up to occur.

Crawl-y was enjoying a sun bath, whilst hating the sun and that damn wonderful good weather, his scales slithering slowly on the sand; when reverberating and repetitive sounds reached him. He disliked that. It even distressed him, as those sounds were from stressed animals. He knew them quite well, socializing with them as a snake. He could sense every hoof, every paw, every slither on the ground and reverberate to him.

Then reached him the sound and babbling of human noises. Crawl-y had had enough. In addition, his primal instinct sensed that something was wrong.  
He slithered as fast as he could to the origin of this trouble.

Human beings were packed before a massive and gigantic boat, one Crawl-y could not possibly imagine, and he had an excellent imagination running in his head. Animals were marching by pairs on a mere plank that joined the ground to the boat. The humans were watching and commenting the whole affair.  
Crawl-y had made it quick to transform. Lately, he had been at ease with what was considered as female clothing. Certainly a period in his ethereal and agender life. He did not care about the stares and muttering.

A bright white spot attracted both attention and eyes.

Nah. That was pure and damn luck.

He went to the white spot as silently as possible, slithering between people like a snake, and tapped the shoulder. He quickly went to Aziraphale's left side as if he was not the author of that poke.  
Aziraphale's face lit up as soon as he recognized Crawl-y – damn this angel who made nothing to simplify their enmity. Nonetheless, Crawl-y got rid of his bitter thoughts as snow could melt under the sun. How could he hold a grudge to that angel?

Having no clue to what was going on; Crawl-y simply asked the only other ethereal being in the area, who willingly answered to him.  
'Not the kids! You can't kill kids!' Crawl-y cut in, his anger burst in a second, disgusted. The ineffable Plan – buggers.

If it had been possible to have a tad faith in God's ineffability to do things properly and with some sense, Crawl-y lost it on that Flood Day.

The aftermath of the Flood had been tragic and painful.  
Aziraphale could feel the demon's distress; so that he decided to stay a bit more in the area – and wondered later if it had been wise of him, as he soon discovered the bitter taste of remorse.

The Earth was virgin of the majority of its population.  
And Crawl-y was crying, huge tears crashing down the sand, his bare hands bleeding from clutching, his body trembling with grief. The children… The day before, he still was playing with them and they… were gone.

Aziraphale approached carefully, knowing that was like approaching a hurt animal, a snake on it all. He gently crouched besides the demon and patted his shoulder as a comforting gesture.

Crawl-y's eyes widened and he rejected that damn pure hand from him, with an ample arch of his arm, hoping he had hurt Aziraphale even a little in the process.  
'Damn you and the ineffable Plan!'  
'Crawl-y…' the angel tried, stuttering, torn between uneasiness and shame, 'Please, Crawl-y, let me…'  
'Go away! GO AWAY!' Crawl-y roared, his eyes mad, his wild hair dancing around his face through the after storm wind.

Something in his voice surely hit a sensitive point in Aziraphale who stood up and slowly stepped backwards, his face contorted with doubt and sadness.

Crawl-y smelt sorrow and wrath. Betrayal was piercing every part of his soul.  
Aziraphale finally turned his heels and went away.  
'Go away… from me…' Crawl-y's trembling lips let escape, tears still running down his angular face.

(up to come)


	2. The temple

Crawl-y did not know how to deal with such devastating and destructive emotions as grief and sadness, still devouring his soul as the flames from Hell did so during and after his Fall.

His mind struggled with proceeding coherent thoughts. He felt empty, exhaustingly empty – and tired. He pained at either walking or slithering, as if any energy had escaped him.

When he was in the urge to find answers to what he had witnessed, damn it, he was full of questions, only the echo of his own despair came back to him.

He even tried resentment as a fuel to go on with his damned life as a demon: resentment against God, resentment against the ineffable Plan, resentment against Aziraphale. Oh, the angel could not acknowledge how Crawl-y despised him now. Still, he would have understood if he had counted the days, months, years he had not seen the serpent demon – well, Crawl-y had avoided him with all his consciousness.

It had started again, damn Faith and all that idiocy some humans believed in and the Sacred Texts were claiming as morals.

Crawl-y had spent most of his time in the desert. He also had enjoyed Mesopotamia, which reminded him of Eden but not too much. Eden was luxuriant and perfect. The Earthian nature was wilder, more humane somehow: something to perfect, since that was nonsensical to try to master nature (take that, God).

One day, Crawl-y decided to settle a bit, coming back to a sedentary way of life, his long travels had exhausted him. And he strongly missed children to play with – yes, and consider it as a way to take distance from Hell and Lord Beelzebub who always gave him missions he could never make.

The demon also wanted to have better and fresher news about the world than what he collected whilst travelling. He needed to have a better understanding on what was humanity on that time and settle in was a good and easy way to succeed.

It was easy to distract humans from the local town about his identity. They merely frowned at his attire, long hair, and yellow eyes and finally decided he was a sort of healer or sorcerer maybe? Well, that did not matter as he soon adopted their customs.

They soon noticed that children liked this stranger man.

Crawl-y sat on the mere ground after a quite exhausting play with the children. All of them were panting and giggling. They too liked his fake villain role that consisted in running after them, hands like claws dressed in mid air, hair tangled and dancing around him, his serpentine eyes flashing fake demonic behaviour, his hissing to the taste of the children who ran and ran and ran, faking their distress but they could not muster as they giggled as well in the process.

Some of them came back to their families.

A girl was braiding Crawl-y's red hair whilst a small group of other girls were chatting about everyday life matters. Crawl-y liked those calm moments, those conversations about how they would soon become wives with what that implied: to get married, to cook, to sew, to raise children of their own.

'Why are you braiding my hair?' Crawl-y asked to the little girl, finishing one more braid with her patient fingers.

'It reminds me of sewing', she replied. 'Your hair is like silk to the touch and braiding it is like sewing to me.'

Crawl-y nodded, to the girl's faint displeasure, reminding him not to move with a pouting scowl of her own. That made sense.

He did not move anymore and let the situation melt to something precious and relaxing. Ah, if demons were watching him, they would be horrified with his attitude, as if tamed by little humans and enjoying mere human pleasures as of being braided.

However, positive moments did not last – to Crawl-y's taste.

Some distracting scramble around the temple became even noisier than it initially was. That was one thing Crawl-y had not understood when he settled there: merchants had taken possession of the temple to sell their products, occulting the fact that they were on sacred grounds.

Here, there were the usual, some buyers too – and something or someone had just created mayhem. People were arguing and that started to annoy Crawl-y who disliked too much noise. He interrupted the little girl in her "sewing", inviting her not to approach the temple, stood up and went straight to the spot.

A boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, as he appeared to be, with his long brown hair, was throwing the merchants' stalls as much as he could do with his strength, resisting at the same time to the ones protesting against him.

'You are soiling this temple!' the boy was shouting, as if he was particularly mad at them. 'You are selling under God's temple roof!'

'Where would we sell our products, boy, hm?' A merchant replied, threateningly approaching the boy, his massive hands on his hips and his gaze daggering at him.

'Just go off, play with the others and let us do our business!' another said.

Crawl-y restrained a growl or a hiss at that scenery. Even though he had a grudge, quite a personal one, to God; he nevertheless could not tolerate what those humans were doing, and he silently agreed with the boy who tried his best to chase them from the temple. A bit of respect could not kill, hey?

Damn it if it was an idea from below. This was the kind of things Hastur or Ligur could have. A stupid one on respectability matters (I'm a demon, I'm a demon, I'm a demon, Crawl-y thought teeth clenched, who cares about respectability! Pha!), certainly, still Crawl-y could understand why: the temple could contain lots of humans between its walls so that was interesting for those merchants to settle in there and dealing their products to make personal business more flourishing.

Still, the boy was alone and outnumbered – and he seemed on the verge to lose his battle, facing grown-ups who could easily take the advantage.

On the other side, Crawl-y despised the human kind a bit deeper as the crowd merely was watching as if mesmerized.

Irritation running short, Crawl-y slapped his face with exasperation and let his fingers run in his hair – until he stopped, pain rushing from his scalp. Damn the braids, he realised. If no one was going to intervene, the boy would be soon chased and Crawl-y sensed in his heart he did not want to witness that peculiar dreadful failure of his.

And he was a demon – seeking for some good deed from a mortal unknown boy. What was wrong with him?

Anyway, Crawl-y sensed that what the boy was claiming as immoral hit hard on a sensitive point – as though despite his misunderstanding about God's plans, he still had some _respect_ towards Her.

Crawl-y could do nothing: he was a new-goer in town, barely did he have tolerance from the locals, and mostly did he need to keep low not to attract Hell's scrutiny.

No miracle then, just enough of something to scare the merchants and make them decide to leave that sacred place at once for all.

Then, he remembered he was a _demon_, damn it, and what was the main duty of a demon? Influencing, tempting, and charming the human souls. Ok. Let's go.

If Jesus succeeded in chasing the merchants was not due to sheer will, God's good influence – no, the sacred texts were wrong on that point, and better off they were wrong because who sufficiently sane would believe that God's son had been helped by a demonic figure?


	3. A new deed

Crawl-y did not stay long in the village after the temple incident: duty called him elsewhere for a while and he obliged to tempt some folks during his travels.  
Still, what Jesus performed always reached him, sometimes with several weeks late. However, the demon was glad to hear about that human, even though he soon had to be careful in the area not to reject what the boy was saying.

One day, he heard that Jesus was preaching God's words (another one, then, Crawl-y thought, after Muhammad and Moses). Crawl-y peered at his informer with some suspicion and doubt though. Well, he was aware of God's permanent need to spread Her words on Earth, still it always baffled the fallen angel. How could She do that, whilst she also could drown everyone at will when she was dissatisfied with the human kind? Crawl-y had not totally recovered from the Flood catastrophe and still did not understand God in Her decisions.  
Worse than Jesus claiming he was professing God's wisdom, was Jesus claiming he was his Son the informer told him.  
Suspicion and doubt dropped to let the poor serpent demon looking at the informer with some horror. What the H- What was that, again?

The informer continued his story, relating to all miracles Jesus had performed so far. Crawl-y frowned at this, trying not to snort at his face whilst thinking hard about that new piece of information.  
Either Jesus was a real son of God or he was a shitty liar. Apparently, people were divided in those two beliefs. The region was enough tense because of the Roman presence in the area (thanks to Crawl-y their administrative system annoyed everyone) and if they even heard about one young guy claiming there was one and only God at their polytheist faces would certainly cause a great diplomatic incident (no less).

Jesus nevertheless was quite shy saying who he was. He was not embarrassed, no, but that was not the type of thing to shout out of one's lungs. The rumour did come from people who loved gossiping and all.  
(Gossips were invented by some demons and they were right to create such a way of communication as gossips could do worse harm than one would predict: till death. That's diabolical, isn't it?)

Crawl-y had that in mind and he had the instinct it would follow Jesus like a shadow until he would be stopped in his mission. A hiss came from the back of his throat, giving chills to the informer. Oh, my. He dismissed the questionable sound, persuading the poor folk he had misheard before he left. Phew.

The sun was deep red on that cloudless night. The wind was bringing some freshness from the faraway mountains. That was why it was rough living in the desert: drastically hot during daytime and chilly at night. Crawl-y closed his eyes for a couple of seconds, already preparing to shiver for the next eight hours or so. But first, contemplating the stars, who quickly winked at him, deeper the sky coloured itself.

Crawl-y's favourite lazy activity, since he had not the luxury to admire his own work before he Fell.  
Say, the perspective troubled him at first as he had been far beyond Earth whilst he was creating the stars (well, Earth had not yet been in God's plans dealing with Creation at that time). Nevertheless, Crawl-y got the taste to watch the stars from where he was. Space was immense, infinite, scary on some aspects, but so… How – one would wait some centuries to use the word "uncanny"; but that was that very idea to describe the cosmos in the demon's mind now.

The night promised to remain calm, though there was always something occurring in the desert, far away from any civilization with all of those creatures and nomad thieves and murderers.

Crawl-y had finally found a nice spot to spend the night as snake, some rocks in the hill which formed a some sort of tiny cavern, fitting him perfectly, quite in an abrupt side of the hill and far enough from any potential threat.

He had merely dozed off when a peculiar putrid smell caught him to the point he became nauseous and as he darted out his tongue to identify the intrusive odour, a chill not coming from the cool temperature passed through his whole body, scale after scale.  
Too soon to be natural, the temperature drastically elevated to a suffocating hotness, which of what one would endure in Hell.

'All Hail Satan!' Hastur pronounced the usual greeting waiting at the entrance of the small cavern, whilst Crawl-y turned back to his human form, only to grunt a feeble joyful greeting back – all Hail Satan, seriously? He had no heart to praise someone else, after his demise with God and even though he had liked Lucifer a lot back then, still praising Satan was actually out of his nerves. Crawl-y did not fit in Hell and all other demons noticed that and played with that weakness to tease and threat him whenever they wanted.

Hastur was one of the fiercest and zealous of them. He sneered at Crawl-y, then showing his teeth which glimmered spookily in that close to total darkness.

'Did you hear about that Jesus guy?' he asked, but his gaze indicated he was sure of the positive answer. 'Everyone has talked about him lately.'  
Crawl-y frowned, for his reputation's sake which was remaining cold-headed, whilst his heart was knocking against his chest with some ache and his blood pulsated strong enough it could have knocked him off.

'Go on,' he replied in a cool voice, 'What the Lord had decided for me to do?'

Hastur groaned. 'The usual, y'know. Temptation and all. He's going to spend forty days in the desert, something of the like to show that Almighty of his Mother he's worth the waste.'  
The demons had already made the bet: "how long Jesus would last in the desert?"

'The thing is that he must fail.' Hastur insisted, as if Crawl-y was thick (yes, he was – on some points, still he hated the way the others played along with that).  
A thick silence fell upon them, each one eyeing the other, waiting for a possible sign of weakness. That was what one could name as "the need to dominate the other through a battle of glares".

Crawl-y soon sensed that something was wrong, watching Hastur with peculiar attention. Even though his words had been clear, something in his eyes quivered. Ah. Doubt was crippling him and he hated that.  
'What's that?' Crawl-y asked.

'The problem is that… Well, it is said that Jesus had not to fail.' Hastur answered him with some reluctance – and it was understandable: who would like to accept a mission which would fail anyway?

'Oh! So, Hell must oblige to tempt that… guy; even if Heaven already decided the issue of it, is that it?' Crawl-y said, tease playing along his tone. 'Really? And they want me to try anyway? Is that really necessary? I mean… Yeah, I guess that's normal, it's part of the job, it's part to show Heaven we have enough nerve to try anyway, but…'

'Quiet!' Hastur cut in, anger reverberating through the other side of the hill. 'Just do what you're demanded. Stop with your questions!' A smile played on his lips, a dirty smile. 'Remember what it happened to you for asking too much questions…'

That hit a sensitive point in Crawl-y who grimaced and glared at Hastur with every bit of his wrath he kept low in general.  
'Oops. Did it hurt?'

It was sheer violence not to pick at this provocation and Crawl-y spent several painful minutes recovering. That was not the time to fight another demon. It would be a lot of paperwork and a trial in front of everybody down there. It was not worth it.

'And, when I'm finished…' He finally asked in a cool voice.  
'You'll report after that.' Hastur replied, still this silly smile across his face.

'Is that necessary? Can't I just… Like… Drop the report and..?' Crawl-y tried to negotiate, in a poor attempt to avoid all of them a bit longer.  
'It's an order, Crawl-y.' Hastur interjected. Then, he disappeared, eaten by the soil below them. Ugh. Crawl-y had always despised this means of transportation.

The usual smells from the desert assaulted his senses after that he almost choked from fresh and sudden air.

Crawl-y could sleep no more from the remaining of the night. He spent it at watching the sky, dread and fear of his new deed, torn between failing and corrupting Jesus.

(up to come)


End file.
